“Short phrases are much easier and clearer to conduct; in pieces like this, large gestures across time are key. It’s all one big phrase, and it relies on the conductor to carry that phrasing. When you have that many major chords in a row, how each one is voiced becomes crucial.”
Read More"Refugees often don't talk about refugee status; they don't want it to define them," says Lidiya Yankovskaya, founder and conductor of the Refugee Orchestra Project, an ensemble of top-level musicians from around the globe. "They want to define their own lives for who they are."
Read MoreMonday marks World Refugee Day, something that has added significance this year in light of the ongoing war in Ukraine. NBC’s Anne Thompson reports on the inspiring story of The Refugee Orchestra Project aiming to help them and others.
Read MoreRaised in Russia, with summers in Ukraine, Lidiya Yankovskaya’s family fled St. Petersburg in the post-Soviet Reconstruction era. She founded the Refugee Orchestra Project to raise awareness about the contributions refugees make.
Read MoreMusic can foster dialogue – by telling stories, by transporting us into a different place, a different culture, a different sense of time, a different point in history…
Read MoreResilience has become one of the defining characteristics of Yankovskaya’s musical approach…
Read MoreA growing number of queer-inclusive interpretations of classic works have been filling up season calendars. These deliberately imaginative revivals perform a corrective function, reinstating queer people into cultural contexts where they were previously — and inaccurately — erased.
Read MoreOpera is a collaborative and, at its best, a transformative art form. Chicago Opera Theater ushered in an exciting new artistic era by bringing Russian-American conductor Lidiya Yankovskaya to COT as music director.
Read MoreLidiya Yankovskaya gave birth to her second child on 15 December, before returning to the podium three days later. Yankovskaya was told during her first pregnancy that “being a mother and being a conductor are incompatible”, and that she “couldn’t possibly conduct while caring for a newborn.”
Read MoreIt's still rare to see a woman conduct an opera — and rarer still to see a pregnant woman conducting an opera. That's what made Russian American conductor Lidiya Yankovskaya's December 2021 all the more eye-catching.
Read MoreLidiya Yankovskaya is an accomplished conductor, having conducted more than 40 world premieres, including 16 operas. She currently works as music director for the Chicago Opera Theater, and in December she welcomed her second child without missing a beat.
Read MoreAmerican-Russian conductor Lidiya Yankovskaya preached about the inclusion of females in the orchestra after she returned to the stage just days after giving birth.
Read MoreIt’ll seem like a reunion of German composers from the Romantic era when the Elgin Symphony Orchestra takes stage for its next concert.
Read MoreConductor Lidiya Yankovskaya stopped by HPR studios to talk about her upcoming performance with the Hawaii Symphony Orchestra in their Starlight concert series from the Waikīkī Shell.
Read MoreIn 2020, COT music director Lidiya Yankovskaya led the company in a fully staged world premiere before the pandemic and daring online performances amid the shutdown. In both settings, Yankovskaya and COT emerged as the very model of how to survive adversity, and also how to thrive in it.
Read More“Despite the pandemic, the musical director of the Chicago Opera continues to work…”
The tenacity of companies like Chicago Opera Theater cannot be understated. The work requires resourcefulness, organizational prowess, an abiding mutual trust from supporters and donors, and the kind of exuberant industriousness exemplified in their Orli and Bill Staley Music Director, Lidiya Yankovskaya.
Read MoreIf you watch any US orchestra, particularly one with a multimillion-dollar budget, you’re almost guaranteed to see a white man standing on the conductor’s podium. Most estimates put the share of women conductors in America at or below 10 percent—and that’s only if you include those holding the baton for community groups, youth orchestras, and summer festivals. At Chicago Opera Theater, Lidiya Yankovskaya is among the few to crack an especially thick glass ceiling…
Read MoreLidiya Yankovskaya is busy—which, in light of the last six months, is good to hear. The music director of the Chicago Opera Theater, founder of the Refugee Orchestra Project, and former Musical America New Artist of the Month, Yankovskaya is at the moment involved in three projects simultaneously, each requiring major adjustments for the pandemic.
Read MoreAs her smile crescendos, it’s clear that she can’t help but delightedly state the obvious: Lidiya Yankovskaya is “very, very excited for live music.” And come this weekend, the Russian-American conductor’s six-month-long, pandemic-induced concert drought will finally draw to an end…
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